After a busy but brief tour of the east coast of the United States, Crystal Palace have returned to South London, with the Eagles set to face Ligue 1 side Nantes in a final pre-season clash before their 2024/25 Premier League campaign gets underway against Brentford the following weekend.
The South London club enjoyed an excellent trip to the States, recording a 3-1 victory over Gary O’Neil’s Wolves in Maryland before repeating the impressive scoreline in Florida against Julien Lopetegui’s new look West Ham side, resulting in Palace lifting the Stateside Cup in the 69,000 seater home of NFL outfit, Tampa Bays.
Sunday will mark the beginning of what is a busy spell in London for Crystal Palace, with Oliver Glasner’s team not set to leave the capital until mid-September when they take on newly promoted Leicester.
Over the opening three games of the Premier League season, Palace will play against west London’s Brentford and Chelsea, with their maiden home game of the season against West Ham sandwiched in the middle of those two fixtures.
Palace fans will be much enthused ahead of the new campaign after Oliver Glasner led a transformation of the team following his arrival in the latter half of the 2023/24 season.
The Austrian manager, who is set to turn 50 later this month, oversaw an excellent end to last season, with the Eagles winning 5 of their final 6 league games, including a 4-0 victory over Manchester United as well as a 5-0 thrashing of Unai Emery’s Aston Villa on the final day of the season, as they climbed into the top half of the table to finish in 10th place for the first time since 2015.
A busy summer has since seen them make a host of recruitments with Chadi Riad, a promising young centre back from Barcelona signing for a fee of £12 million, while talented midfielders, Daichi Kamada and Ismaila Sarr, have also come through the door.
In the opposite direction, star attacker, 22 year-old Michael Olise, has departed South London, with the French forward joining European giants, Bayern Munich, in a £50 million deal.
With more incomings and outgoings rumoured to be on the horizon as well as a season which promises so much, this article discusses the main talking points ahead of the upcoming campaign for Crystal Palace.
Palace to continue where they left off from?
With the end of Roy Hodgson’s tenure seeing Crystal Palace flirt with the relegation zone, the arrival of Glasner in late February of 2024, would mark the beginning of a complete turnaround.
The South London club quickly rose up the table, with their final eight games seeing the side lose just once against eventual champions, Manchester City, as they recorded impressive wins against Liverpool, Newcastle, Aston Villa and Manchester United, conceding nine goals and scoring 21 in the process.
While Glasner was the spark that had ignited the Palace turnaround, Jean Philippe Mateta or ‘JP’ - as he is affectionally called by Crystal Palace fans, was key to sustaining this supercharged South London side.
The French forward, who had only previously scored 11 goals across 78 league appearances and three seasons in a Palace shirt, would quickly enter into the best goalscoring form of his career.
Under the guidance of Glasner, Mateta went onto score 13 goals across the final 12 games of the Premier League season including braces against West Ham and Newcastle as well as a final day hat-trick against Aston Villa.
The number nine has continued his good form into the Olympics, where under the stewardship of legendary French striker, Thierry Henry, the 27 year-old has scored five goals on France’s route to the final, with Les Bleus set to meet Spain in the showpiece final on Friday.
If Crystal Palace want to begin where they left off following last season, Mateta’s continued goalscoring form will be key to the ambitions of the whole club.
Sarr to return to his best under Glasner?
While Olise’s £50 million departure to Bayern Munich was a devastating blow to many Palace fans, his replacement has already arrived in the shape of former Watford winger, Ismaila Sarr.
The Senegalese forward joins for a fee in the region of £11 million after a solitary season at Marseille, in which two hamstring injuries and African Cup of Nations duty hampered the players efforts to bring any consistency to his time in the south of France, making just 10 goal contributions across 35 appearances.
Having now returned to the Premier League, Sarr will be hoping Glasner - who has a track record of revitalising players careers - can get him back playing his best football in front of the fans at Selhurst Park.
Prior to making the move to Palace and his time in Marseille, Sarr had enjoyed four and a half years at Watford, where after signing as their record transfer in a £30 million deal, the winger would go onto enjoy highs and lows, recording particularly impressive performances against Liverpool, in which he ended the eventual Champions 44 match unbeaten run, and Manchester United as he recorded 56 goal contributions across 131 games.
Sarr will be keen to return to the form that saw the player nominated for the Golden Boy during his time at Rennes - where he won their first Coupe de France in almost half a century and scored the Europa League goal of the Season, a stunning volley that crashed in off the underside of the bar.
With the quick and explosive player best know for his work out wide, in contrast to the inverted style of Michael Olise, Sarr represents a fundamentally different attacker to that of the Frenchman he has come into replace.
Sarr, while having an excellent eye for spectacular strikes, offers creativity from wide areas, as well as a high work rate off the ball - ranking high in Ligue 1 for interceptions, aerial duals and tackles.
For the small fee that Palace have payed to bring Sarr to South London, the exciting wide-man offers a high ceiling, and Glasner is arguably the right man to return the forward back to his very best form.
A mass exodus on the horizon?
Having already lost Olise to Bayern Munich, Palace fans may see another departure of one of their most prized assets - Eberechi Eze and Marc Guehi, as a sign of faltering ambition and as a mass exodus of their best talent when the club could be looking to push on under Glasner.
Marc Guehi, according to reports, has no intentions of signing a new deal with Crystal Palace, with just two years remaining on his current contract, and has reportedly already agreed personal terms with Newcastle United, with the Tyneside club now negotiating for a fee in the region of £60 million.
The 24 year-old centre-back enjoyed a particularly impressive EUROs, playing alongside John Stones for every game but one, in which he was suspended, and became a key fixture in an England side that just missed out upon a first European Championship.
Eze, another Crystal Palace talent who made the England squad for this summer’s EUROs, may also be on his way out of the door, with the likes of Liverpool and Tottenham interested in securing the 26 year-old’s signature.
The attacking midfielder remains under contract at Palace until 2028, and with Olise already delivering a sizeable sum of cash to the South London club, as well as a move for Guehi representing another increase in the club’s cashflow, it would take a hefty fee for Crystal Palace to be tempted into selling.
On a more positive note for Palace fans, outgoings may represent a chance for them to reinvest a large amount into fresh faces and promising youngsters that the club can then look to nurture and sell on in the future for similar sums, representing a sustainable business model that has thrust clubs like rivals Brighton into European football.
European football the aim under Glasner?
At the mention of European football, it is only right to note that the 2024/25 campaign for many Palace fans will hold real ambitions of securing European football for the first time since 1998 - when the Eagles became the first English club to feature in the Intertoto Cup, playing just one tie against Turkish side, Samsunspor.
Palace fans have watched on in envy as their arch rivals, Brighton, enjoyed a fantastic maiden campaign in Europe, beating the likes of Ajax, Marseille and AEK Athens to finish top of their group before being knocked out by European regulars, Roma.
Furthermore, Aston Villa’s miraculous run into the Champions League places, a club that was in the second tier of English football as recently as 2019, demonstrates that those outside of the big six do have a very real shot at getting into Europe.
With Glasner having raised the ambition of Palace, who tasted European success before when he managed Eintracht Frankfurt to Europa League silverware in 2022, the fans of the South London side will arguably be buoyed with belief that their side can potentially secure a European spot.
Daichi Kamada, who has joined Palace this summer after previously working with Glasner at Frankfurt, where the pair won the Europa League together, spoke of Crystal Palace’s European ambition in his first interview with the club.
The Japanese midfielder said: “In the Premier League, I think one of the team’s main objectives is to qualify for next season’s European competition, and I hope I can contribute to that.
“When I was in Germany, my Frankfurt team tended to make great progress in the cup competitions. So in that sense, the cup competitions will be a good chance to win a trophy with Crystal Palace too, and I would like to play in this team with the aim of winning a big title like that.”
